Thursday, February 3, 2011

The Chicken or the Egg?

Every once in a while you stubble upon a picture and suddenly....everything makes sense.

This afternoon while searching for a cord for my phone I stumbled on this picture from 1977. To most this just seems to be a class picture of innocent 7th grade children, but, what struck me was how completely out of place the little pre-teen standing front and center appears.

There she is with her Charlie's Angel's hairstyle. She looks so confidant in her purple striped sweater with her green jeans. Dittos, I suspect. My first thought is...did she not own a mirror? Or, perhaps was she color blind? Maybe she thought that her 4'9" stature would have placed her in the back row.

She looks happy enough in the photo, but I knew her and the truth is--she never felt like she "fit in" with this class, or for that matter, within this small Christian school. She felt like the other girls knew how to be good girls and she did not. They knew that good girls wear dresses on School Picture Day and not a tacky sweater and pants that are a little too tight. They knew that good girls don't stand with one knee bent, in a slightly provocative manner (at least not for several more years). They knew that good girls don't kiss the boy in the second row on the far left, not even one small kiss behind the lunch building.

Looking at this picture and knowing that she was an innocent and yet seemed to carry herself as a bit of a mini-harlot, but later made heart wrenching choices that carried her into a world of guilt I cannot help but wonder...which came first, the chicken or the egg?